


Risking My Life to Keep You All Informed

by Findecutie



Category: RWBY
Genre: M/M, because this is fanfiction and I can make everything hurt less, or at least I can start without total pain and just go around hurting characters individually, that has my ships and doesn't have the end of Volume 3, the beginning of a vague mostly canon universe I'm imagining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 05:40:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6143262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Findecutie/pseuds/Findecutie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Atlesian Special Operatives are trained field agents. Qrow Branwen is something entirely different. Almost all of the missions he's sent on wouldn't (couldn't) be given to a Special Operative, as both he and Ozpin are painfully aware. And not only because he's part of Ozpin's very small, select group. He just tries to ensure that the things that happen when he's away don't make their way back home. Usually it works.</p><p>Part the first: Winter's day takes a turn for the worse. The person responsible (unsurprisingly): Qrow Branwen. The cause, however, is nothing she would have expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Risking My Life to Keep You All Informed

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Volume 3 Chapter 3 of RWBY: It's Brawl in the Family.
> 
> Thanks to MayGlenn for being an awesome last minute Beta reader! Any remaining mistakes I claim full responsibility for.
> 
> This may be the beginning of something longer following additional characters. For now, I hope you enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winter's day takes a turn for the worse. The person responsible (unsurprisingly): Qrow Branwen. The cause, however, is nothing she would have expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Italicized quotes are taken directly from RWBY Volume 3 Chapter 3: It's Brawl in the family.

"Sir?!" Winter snapped to attention as General Ironwood walked out of his office, pace steady as always but appearing more tense than she could ever recall seeing him.  

"Schnee." He nodded, head tilting briefly in her direction though his eyes remained forward, focused on the end of the hallway, and his pace never slowed.

Her brow furrowed briefly. There was something in his aura, perhaps, sparking with confusion and discontent. She glanced down at the pile of reports had been on her way to deliver to him and pressed a panel in the door to open the general's office.

The room was clean, orderly, designed to maximize efficiency. Everything one would expect from an Atlesian general. A large window dominated the far side of the room, currently letting her glimpse the starry sky beyond the ship's walls. There were piles of papers, each carefully bound, arranged on the left side of the desk, a holoscreen projector on the far right side corner with a full keyboard near the front edge. 

She did a double take and frowned. The general's chair was not pushed in-- if anything it look like he had shoved it back before springing out of it (or it would look so if the general would ever do something so indecorous, which she knew he would not). She stepped forward, carefully arranging the new documents so that he would see each set of papers when he returned, the most important on top and centered. As she did so a blinking blue line showing the time crossed her sleeve. A rather bland (efficient, she corrected herself) screensaver. Meaning the computer had not been locked.

Winter barely hesitated before reaching out and shifting the mouse, ready to lock the the system down until the general returned. As she did so the screensaver cleared and the blue line on her white clothing turned to moving gray and black and so much red filling the screen that it took several seconds for her to realize what she was looking at. As realization hit her she could not even summon the disdainful look that the mere mention of Qrow Branwen could usually elicit from her.

The huntsman was hanging by his wrists, feet holding his weight only barely and at the expense of maintaining an extremely painful position. His arms and sides were covered in red lines and as he twisted slightly her breath caught at the red mess of his back. This was worse than a Grimm attack. This was... 

She couldn't bring herself to focus on the glint of silver on a low table. Or the rope next to it. Not a rope, it was a whip, her mind corrected immediately and she failed to suppress a wince. The man on the screen lifted his head slowly, dark locks completely obscuring one eye. The other was clear-- whoever had done this had avoided ruining his face. His mouth twisted into a smile that looked like it hurt as much as his overstretched arms. "'m not your mole. D' I l'k like 'n Atl's r'bot. Fucksake." His voice was even rougher than when he'd been drinking ( _"He's always drinking!"_ Glynda's voice proclaimed in her mind). "I b'long 'ere. 'n I can do so m'ch t'help your org'n'zat'n."

A man stepped halfway into the frame, eyes raking up and down the huntsman. "No. I don't suppose you are Atlesian." His voice was deep and as smooth as Qrow's was rasping. Winter would have called it soothing in almost any other circumstance. "But you _are_ something to behold like this. How long has it been now? Perhaps I'll keep you here a while longer."  

Winter's eyes darted to a time log in the lower corner of the video. ( _"You've been out of contact for weeks! You can't just go dark like that in the field!"_ She heard the general accuse, voice tight with anger... or was it perhaps with fear? Certainly neither he nor Ozpin nor Goodwitch seemed to buy into her argument that there was reason to believe Qrow compromised.)

On screen the man smiled at Qrow, teeth like the broken, stone fragments of Remnant's moon. It was a bony smile, the grinning mouth of a shark, and Winter shivered. Worse than a shark, even. He had the smile of a Grimm. "Just a little more time. You wouldn't deny me that, would you, huntsman?"

Qrow managed to toss his head back with enough speed to clear his eyes. Winter watched him lick his lips and cock his head to the side, eyes heavily lidded, mulling over his answer before opening his mouth to speak.

A hand slapped onto the keyboard in front of her, rings flashing as the spacebar was firmly pushed down, freezing the video. Winter would berate herself later for her complete lack of focus, for being so shocked by a video of... _that._.. that she lost sense of her surroundings. An arm came around her back, grabbing the mouse on her other side and clicking entirely out of the video before moving to lock the computer. Then Qrow stepped back, graceful as ever though with considerably less drunken swaying and looking more displeased then she'd even seen him, albeit in a quiet way. 

"How much did--" he shook his head, reaching up to push his fingers through his hair. "Never mind. Where did that come from? Where's Jimmy?"

Winter was frozen. "You-- they--" 

His eyes lost most of their chill and his voice gentled. "Nothing that hasn't been done before. Nothing that won't happen again." A long exhalation. Sometimes it was easy to forget that she was still so young. "There are places even a Special Operative can't get into, Schnee." He treated her to a quick wink and the half grin that always left her itching to smack him. "But I can." Somehow. Always. "Where's James?"

"The general walked out just as I arrived," she reported, subconsciously falling back on the comfort of military precision. "I was expecting him to be in his office for the next," she checked her watch, "two hours and twenty five minutes. I can request the bridge put out an announcement to find--"

Qrow was already shaking his head. "Don't bother, kid." Her blood pressure immediately started to rise at the form of address. _"And,_ should it come up, since I made my way all the way to this computer, you might point out that _I_ was at the computer and turned it off."

She hadn't expected the offer. He would let her twist the facts to absolve her of ever having stepped up to her general's computer, ever looking at something she wasn't mean to see, hearing something that... she could still hear that voice in her head, asking for more time in a way that wasn't really asking at all. Could still hear Qrow's slow, pained breaths. "How long did he--?"

Qrow straightened from his usual half-drunken slouch. His eyes looked brighter as he caught her gaze. "Tell you the same thing I've told Oz 'n Jimmy." His expression hardened. "Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to." Then he was out the door in a swirl of tattered red and suppressed emotion, usual drunken sway only half present as he made his way to Ironwood's quarters with the same ease he would have were he actually a member of the Atlas military deployed on this ship. 

Winter leaned again the wall and pressed a hand to her chest. Took five deep breaths, then ten. When her heartbeat slowed she pushed away, straightening her top before walking out of the office at a measured pace, face blank and posture military precise as she headed to her next meeting.

**Author's Note:**

> Is anyone else concerned about the kind of surveillance/scouting/potential undercover work Qrow does on his missions? If he's just bird spying that's not so bad, but given the amount of trouble RWBY and JNPR get up to in school I'm more than a little nervous about what he's been sacrificing for the cause.
> 
> I'm not sure where I'm going with this or if it will remain a one-off. For now, it's been left as a potential multi-chapter work.


End file.
